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The Canon200/1.8 is the most famous example, one of the finest lenses ever built and much used in astronomy.
They still haven't replaced it in their line up, I believe.
Seems a shame as the actual production of the lenses was minuscule, and they were hardly likely to be licked by infants or such - at any rate most photographers would give any toddler who did so many more life expectancy issues than were caused by the lead! ;-)
As noted above, the fear wasn't that babies would eat circuit boards. It was that the electronics (and their lead) would end up in landfills.
Probably not too much of a worry with Canon lenses, as they hold their value very well and are pricey enough that people repair them rather than throw them away.
Check out the prices those beauties still fetch - I don't think landfill is a concern!
OTOH, I'm not sure lead is the reason they were discontinued. Why would only that lens require lead? They're still making lots of other lenses.
I suspect the real reason is they didn't sell enough to make it profitable. IOW, it would be out of production anyway, lead or no lead.
I don't know in a referenced way, but at the time was spending a lot of time on dpreview, that was not the only lens discontinued when they weren't allowed to use lead to dope the glass, and most of the very highest quality glass did.
Of course, low demand explains why they did not make greater efforts to build a replacement with the new restrictions, but regardless of other motivations the EU lead regulation would have made them discontinue it, so it seems unnecessary to look harder for causes.
Canon and other lens makers routinely retire lens models and replace them. This one would have been retired anyway, no doubt. It was retired just about the time when people were switching from film to digital. A lot of lenses were retired then (and replaced with spiffier versions with IS). The slow-selling models were not replaced. This was probably one of them. It took them 13 years to sell 5,000 lenses. Not very profitable, lead or no lead.
Canon probably made a decision to replace the fabrication processes using lead with some other technology. When your fab processes change, your design usually follow. Lenses with small markets could well not be justified to go through redesign and probably retooling.
Why would only that lens require lead
Optical properties of leaded glass? Or perhaps the lead makes the glass more shape-able, thus allowing the maker to get the lenses correct.
And my gut was right:
(Now I'm looking up homemade glass foundries - just what I need - more stuff to consume electricity!)
I don't buy it. That doesn't explain why the 200mm f/1.8 would need lead, but not, say, the 300mm f/2.8.
I do.
Channeling physics of optics from my teen years and my now dead grandpa commenting on how all the good binoculars were made in Germany VS Japan - I have no trouble believing that better manufacturing and knowledge of optics would make the lenses 'better' over time. Better ways to make glass lenses helped drive down the cost and up the quality so my Grandpa's POV was just wrong by the time came I cared about a set of Binoculars.
In the case of the 2 lenses - we do not know the size or the arrangement of the glass elements - therefore one can not say with any kind of authority if the improvements are due to the better manufacturing of the glass elements or changes in the placement or different dopants in the glass.
Optics and the rules about how photons travel are well enough understood that if we know the lens placements and the dopants in the glass, we can calculate the 'betterness' or even how one lens is working VS the other. Finite Element analysis or POV ray tracing are to ways I can think of - based on what I remember of physics of light and such from my misspent youth.
Forget the lead. Look at the dates. The EU ban started July 2006. Canon stopped manufacturing the lens in question in 1998, and officially announced its retirement in 2001. Lead had nothing to do with it. It was all about low sales.
Hmm, actually I expressed myself poorly, and there was more than one lens at issue - I can't remember the details now at this distance in time - the 200/1.8 was the one everyone focussed on.
But the real issue though is that it didn't just affect luxury goods, medical imaging equipment and so on was also affected, where it is really, really nice to be able to see what is happening.
There are probably other fields I am unaware of where it also may have had a major impact.
Now I am not sure if they have been able to work around these problems and get the same standard of performance in all fields as before, but the general point is that bans should be imposed with care, and individual items looked at to assess the impact, rather than just coming out with one size fits all legislation.
Chromatic aberration becomes more of a problem as the f-ratio gets smaller.
Lead in the environment is a big problem. You average early 1990s vintage computer and CRT contain about 4 lbs. of it. Most of that has probably ended up in landfills, either in the U.S. or "recycled" in third world countries (which means dumped in a pile more often that not it seems). All landfills leak, even new ones, it just takes them longer. Secondly, lead in the environment does not go away, not really ever. When hurricane Katrina swept through the gulf states, people started seeing elevated lead concentrations in near surface soils and sediments. They realized that what this was was the lead that was deposited from when leaded gasoline was being used. It never went away, it just got buried and kicked up again when the hurricane swept through. Additionally, there is still noticeable lead contamination at and downwind of sites where the Romans roasted lead ore and that was a couple thousand years ago.
I'm sorry you won't be able to take pictures in your favorite way, but by removing all sources of lead ending up in waste streams you are minimizing the risk of literally hundreds of future generations from developing neurological problems.
I thought putting lead in petrol was insane - perhaps they had been exposed to too much lead as children? :-)
However I am not too keen on politicians blanket bans, and bland assumption that the technical guys will somehow get over it, and think that a wiser course would have been to offer very limited and specific exceptions with strict rules for recycling.
Top quality optical glass is jut one example of areas which are tough to substitute, and I feel that bans need intelligent application, not just for lead but any future materials which are held to be hazardous.
Yeah I do see your point, specialty cases like you lens are not ever going to be a major component of a waste stream. I suppose if Canon had lobbied hard enough, they might have gotten an exception... or maybe not. These things are hard to tell, especially if it's a case of where to draw the line. Dichotomies are much easier to grasp and legislate I suppose.
"All landfills leak, even new ones, it just takes them longer"
Most of the time I would blow off most comments. But I spent my first 5 years out of school designing and doing construction over site on landfill projects.
I have a hard time to believe that a newer landfill would leak, the only way is if a owner allows for to much head then they have a sidewall blowout, that another issue, and those people should go to jail!
Otherwise with 4 feet of clay correctly installed and a liner there is no way a NEW landfill would leak, plus with the leachate collection systems today.
Boy I'm happy not doing that any more, but I did realize how wasteful we really are.
From my years working as a mechanical and civil engineer, I have to ask
"What is this landfill liner with an infinite life-span?"
"Where is the clay that cannot be eroded by geological processes?"
"What is the system that prevents people from excavating and releasing toxic landfill materials in the future?"
"What happens to the leachate? (Is it disposed of in a meta-landfill?)"
Clearly as claimed above, on some timescale, all landfills will leak. Better-designed landfills will leak on a longer timescale, but no design can defeat the forces of entropy, erosion, and material degradation forever.
Tommyvee is right. You can put as much effort and money as you wish into the containment system for your waste, but at some point it becomes prohibitive and you have to stop and it WILL leak given enough time. Here's the official EPA take on it:
The longest certification for a waste disposal system that I can think of is the Yucca Mountain Repository. There the DOE has certified that radionuclide escape will be at or below acceptable levels for 10,000 years. That doesn't mean there is no escape, only acceptable levels of it. Of course, this was struck down in court because it doesn't correspond to the peak in radiation coming from the site, which is on the 100,000 year time scale. If I remember correctly, DOE has stated it is unable to certify the repository for that long, so at this point it requires an act of congress to say, "yes unacceptable levels of leakage are okay after 10k years."
The same sort of phenomenon has occurred with forest fires near Los Angeles putting back into the air decades of car exhaust detritus from the leaded fuel era. What a toxic legacy humans have.